desktop

Display your Flickr Favourites as Screensaver Slideshow

Install XScreenSaver and remove Gnome default sudo apt remove gnome-screensaver sudo apt install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra Run the Screensaver UI and configure In the "Advanced" section enter your Flickr RSS URL in "Choose Random Image" https://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_faves.gne?id=YOURFLICKRUSERID #replace with your Flickr User ID Create a systemd user service to autostart mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/ vim ~/.config/systemd/user/xscreensaver.service Past the following [Unit] Description=XScreenSaver [Service] ExecStart=/usr/bin/xscreensaver -nosplash [Install] WantedBy=default.target Start and enable systemd user service systemctl --user enable xscreensaver systemctl --user start xscreensaver To copy the settings (including RSS URL) onto other PC's or re-install it might be a good idea to backup or copy the contents of ~/.xscreensaver

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Ubuntu 14.04 Amazon EC2 Cloud Desktop using LXQT

Using Amazon EC2's free usage tier to host your own cloud desktop is a very economical way to to have a desktop at hand anytime you can not be near one. Since I quite often use Chromebooks these days when on the road this is a particular handy way should I need a full desktop for certain tasks. Since Ubuntu 14.05 is my default desktop on my normal hardware I obviously want to have my cloud desktop running the same underlying OS. However I don't think running Unity as the desktop interface would be appropriate via a low-bandwidth remote desktop connection. For this reason I chose LXQT. If you need total stability you probably should go for the more mature LXDE instead, but I have already tried LXQT on an old EEE PC and was very impressed by the speed and low resource usage. NOTE (Edit: 2014-11-03): Please find an updated (and easier) version of this blog here. I was experiencing some issues with LXQT (which is understandable as it clearly states that it is not a release version) Provision Ubuntu 14.04 LTS EC2 Instance Instance details Connect to AWS Console and go to EC2 Service Choose OS Image: "Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS" (see screenshot) Choose a "Micro Instance" if you want to use Amazon's Free Usage Tier Choose Instance details - the defaults will generally be fine Add Storage (I generally add a separate Volume for /home but default should do) Tag instance (just give it a name to…

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Turning the Toshiba Z830 into a Ubuntu Ultrabook

EDIT: Here are some tweaks if you install 12.04 (Precise Pangolin). Since I will have to do a fair amount of traveling in the next year I was in need of upgrading my trusted workhorse of Toshiba Qosmio F60 to a more portable option that will be easier on the shoulders during long travels. After doing some research into which of the major manufacturers offer the best support for a Linux based Operating System it came down to a final two: the Intel i7 variants of Samsung Series 9 and the Toshiba Z830. Thanks to these sites for some useful content: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/ http://www.linlap.com/wiki/toshiba+portege+z830-10f http://blog.stevenocchipinti.com/2011/12/toshiba-portege-z830.html http://www.bestultrabooks.co/ In the end it came down to Toshiba having full-size VGA, HDMI and Ethernet connectors at the rear of the unit (no need for carrying adapters) and getting a very decent price rebate for the Toshiba. The first and only task in the included Windows 7 OS was to create a recovery USB drive using the Toshiba included utility (on the desktop). You need a 12GB USB stick (found out the hard way after buying an 8GB version with the unit on advice of the sales guy). After booting from a USB stick created from the Ubuntu 11.10 ISO (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download) with Ubuntu Bootdisk Creator (or alternatively UnetBootin) I opted to wipe the whole SSD drive. If you are not sure that you want to stick with Ubuntu it might be safer to try running from USB or dual-boot. Note: you need to use the USB3…

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Mobile Browser Testing on the Desktop

If you need to check websites for mobile compliance on a regular basis you know that having a device to constantly check is painful and slows down your work during debugging and phases of constant change.   by  adactio  There are a few tools that will make this work a lot easier: Google Chrome Chrome does have some nice dedicated plug-ins to help with this task Ripple Mobile Environment Emulator (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/geelfhphabnejjhdalkjhgipohgpdnoc) appMobi HTML5 XDK (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onmkoldigcfmebcinpmineoadckalllb) Firefox I am not aware of any plug-ins like Chrome, but as a hack I have found it useful to employ a user-agent switching plugin to trick the browser User Agent Switcher (http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/) works well for this. Download the User Agent Switcher Add-on for Firefox Restart Firefox for the add-on change to take place. To start a new browsing session using an emulated browser, go to Tools > User Agent Switcher and select the appropriate mobile web browser you want to emulate To switch back to normal browsing, just select the default option from the above menu. If you need more specific UA Strings check here: http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/mobile_ids.html For more serious work there are obviously dedicated emulators from the major Mobile OS vendors (but they need to be installed and configured for each platform): Android (http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html) iOS (http://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/) WinPhone (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=13890) Nokia (http://www.developer.nokia.com/Develop/Web/) Opera (http://www.opera.com/developer/tools/mini/) WebOS (http://developer.palm.com/)   PS: Nothing substitutes final QA testing on actual devices ...  

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Revert Ubuntu Netbook UI

If you upgrade you Ubuntu Netbook release to 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) you will notice a change to the new ¨Unity¨ user interface. Personally I think the new interface is absolutely horrible (from a usability perspective) and I wanted to revert to the previous Netbook-Launcher. HOWTO Install the required components via terminal: sudo apt-get install netbook-launcher-efl After install just change the "Login Settings" Log out and after the next login: voila - the laucher interface: However in the end I changed to the desktop interface which I found the most useful for my type of usage.

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